Wednesday, April 22, 2009

So, I'm in Nova Scotia, performing in the Halifax comedy festival. I arrived last night and watched the opening night gala (my first show isn't until today). Afterward, I went to the after-party with the other performers and talked shop. Here are some observations I have about the night:

1. No matter what I've done in my life, I'm still five years old when it comes to meeting new people. Walking into the greenroom felt like the first day of kindergarten. Oh, it worked out a lot better than grammar school did (no puking), but it galls me that at 32, I still get butterflies about meeting new people. I hope that my son is better than I am about social anxiety.

2. Canadians are as friendly as advertised, even the comedians. This is disconcerting. My experience has taught me that other comics should either be a) horrible or b) fake-nice. "Real niceness" is going to take some getting used to.

3. I shouldn't drink. Seriously, I had two white wines and a three vodka cranberries at the after party and I woke up this morning feeling like Nicholas Cage in the third act of "Leaving Las Vegas." (By the way, there's nothing more embarrassing than not drinking beer in front of Canadians. Everyone kept asking me if I wanted one, and every time I would launch into a long, annoying explanation of how I never developed a taste for it, even though I tried. I think someone ought to sell wine coolers in beer bottles so people like me don't feel bad all the time).

My first show is tonight. I hope it goes well. I woke up this morning with a deep fear that the people of Canada won't get my Skittles reference. It occurs to me that I might be the only person on the planet who woke up today with that particular fear.

(By the way, the reason why this post exists is because I don't have any screenplay work pressing right now. Everything is out and free in the wilds of Hollywood and while I wait for feedback, I find my typing fingers twitchy. To the small group of people that occasionally check this page, please accept my apologies for its infrequent updates. I've discovered this about myself: I've only got so much creative in me on a daily basis. Two hours on a screenplay, and I've got nothing for the blog. So, I'll try to update it during this brief window and hope that one day I'll actually be able to do two creative things at once.)

Sunday, January 25, 2009

I just ate a pear. It was so cold and delicious. As William Carlos Williams might say, it was ass-shatteringly good.

Like usual, however, there's no good that I can't find the bad in. See, the pear doesn't taste good because the universe is kind and wants me to experience pleasure unfettered, it's because the pear wants to reproduce and the best way to do that is to make itself tasty to higher lifeforms like myself.

I'm a step in the reproductive process of a pear. I'm a cog. I might as well be a giant wrinkly gonad hanging down from a metaphorical pear crotch.

But it's not just pears manipulating me, it's all of nature. Just about every single thing that feels or tastes or smells good is a subtle push in the direction nature wants me to go in.

Chocolate tastes good because we need fat and sugar in our diet. Because we evolved in a place where fat and sugar were relatively hard to come by, we're programmed to seek it out. The more rare something is, see, the more pleasure it has to provide so we have the motivation to look for it.

Modern milk chocolate is essentially 50% sugar and 50% fat; eating it is like slathering your brain with orgasm juice. It lights up like a Christmas tree.

It feels sublime, but it's not. It's just molecules bouncing off of each other in the right order to provide us pleasure. And that pleasure is a reward for getting some stuff our body needs.

We're just dogs salivating when the bell rings.

I tell you all this not to depress you but to raise the question as to whether it's possible that there is any free will at all. I mean, from a certain point of view, pears are the kings of society, employing a complex system of human slaves to keep them well tended in lavish pear plantations. It's actually possible to view the world this way, if you stare at it long enough, like a sailboat popping out of one of those Magic Eye 3-D posters.

I think about all the time and effort I put into things and especially all the worry, the constant crushing worry, and it occurs to me that the curse of consciousness is that it provides the illusion of free will.

Think about it, there must have been a first time for consciousness. I mean, there must have been a single ape somewhere out in the plains of Africa who was the first one to make the leap from animal to something more than animal. Picture him (or her) out there, using a stick to grab ants out of a hill just like he was programmed to, just like he always does, but then a bolt of synaptic lightening flashes and suddenly he's thinking ABOUT what he's doing.

And when he does? What does he do?

He says: "This must MEAN something."

But of course it means just what it meant the second before he started thinking about it. All it means is that his body needs protein and little stupid ants crawling up a stick are a convenient way for him to get it.

That is all it means.

Again, I'm not necessarily upset about this, I'm just wondering if, perhaps, I should just give in to the physical world without worrying about the metaphysical. That maybe I should stop pretending that Mother Nature and I are equal partners in this universe.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

It's been a while, I know. But, believe me, it's not because my brain isn't working. It's because the state of New Jersey makes you do a bunch of stuff in order to buy a house.

I imagine if I bought one two years ago, at the height of the Tulip-economy that was the mortgage industry then, I would have only had to prove that I had fingerprints before they poured a barrel full of money on the table. Now, though? More paperwork than my comedian (read: dinosaur) brain can comprehend.

So, hold tight, fair readers. More writing is on the way.

(Two notes:

Megan, I took your advice about updating my website... and accidentally destroyed the whole thing! The good people at iPower are in the process of trying to repair the damage. As always, I am an idiot.

Carol, here's what you said about my post regarding Ann "C"oulter:

"Maybe you're trying to be funny by throwing about objectionable language - goodness knows a lot of comics eventually take that low road - but why not respond in an intelligent way to the clip you linked there? Is juvenile name calling that much more fun?"

Just a point of order: I never actually, you know, used the word. Is it really taking a low road if you don't actually take the road, but instead map out the directions for others to take the low road themselves?

For the first time ever, one of my TV Squad articles got a little traction on digg.com. It probably doesn't have enough critical mass to get to the front page, but it was a pretty good run there in the late afternoon.

I guess the formula is: internet celebrity + compliments = diggs.

I wish I had known this earlier. My next TV 101 is going to be called "Why Kevin Rose is super handsome."

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

I know that you all pretty much universally hate the "c-word." I know that merely uttering it within a thousand yards of a self-respecting female is a one-way ticket to having your balls bashed in.

I can't say I understand it -- it is, after all, just a word -- but I've come to accept that it's best just to clear that word out of my mind. I Winston Smith it right down the memory hole and pretend that I never learned it. It's really the only way you can survive a marriage.

All that being said, can't we all come together and agree that it's okay to use the "c-word" when talking about Ann Coulter? It's the only word in the English language that properly describes her.

Like always, I spent my time during break thinking of ways to improve the world. Here's my latest idea: let's create an online service that matches frigid women with necrophiliacs.

I feel bad for necrophiliacs the same way I feel bad for all people with really weird fetishes. The closest thing I have to a fetish is wanting to play with my wife's boobs and even that requires skill and planning to pull off. I can't imagine how tough it would be to have something more severe.

Think about how terrible a necrophiliac's life must be. All that grave-digging! The constant fear of being caught! The exorbitant Lysol bills!

So why not hook them up with frigid women? There's a whole group of girls that are roundly criticized by their husbands for just "lying there like they were dead." Instead of trying to change for men who dislike that sort of thing, let's get them together with the guys who'd go nuts for it!